Defeat of Congressional Pay Increase Demolishes No-Vote System

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A 22-year-old system for raising the pay of top Government officials without a Congressional vote has been demolished by the furor that defeated the 51 percent pay increase this week, lawmakers said today.

''I don't think you'll ever have another salary increase without a direct vote,'' said Representative Tony Coelho of California, the Democratic whip.

But that reality left many members of Congress debating how salaries should be set, given their view that salaries need to be raised for Congress and other top Federal officials and that public resistance to the increases makes them almost impossible to pass. System Doesn't Require Vote

That was the reason Congress in 1967 created the current system, the quadrennial commission, under which a bipartisan commission proposes a pay increase, the President includes some or all of it in his budget and it goes into effect unless Congress votes against it within 30 days.

The 30 days had almost run out for the proposed 51 percent raise when the House and Senate voted it down Tuesday afternoon in the face of one of the strongest outpourings of anti-Government sentiment that members of Congress could remember.

''Not only was the amount of money too much,'' said Representative Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, ''The process it was attempted by was wrong.''

But there is no agreement on a new process. Suggestions range from a constitutional amendment to turn all power for setting Congressional pay over to the President to going back to the system that existed before 1967, under which raises had to be voted up or down by Congress. Debating New Approaches

''I don't know where we turn,'' said Representative Vic Fazio, Democrat of California. ''Voting on it hasn't worked and not voting on it hasn't worked. I don't know any other approach.''

The question could receive an early test if President Bush pursues a raise for judges and senior executive officials, as he suggested he might when he signed the resolution from Congress Tuesday disapproving the 51 percent raise.

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Mr. Fazio said it would be a smart move for Mr. Bush to revive the question quickly by proposing the raises in his address to a joint session of Congress Thursday night. ''He makes judges happy,'' said Mr. Fazio, ''he makes his appointees happy and he probably prolongs his own honeymoon'' with Congress. The Madison Proposal

One proposal gaining currency is as old as the Republic: Congress should approve increases in its own pay but the increases should not take effect until after the next election. James Madison proposed this as one of the 12 original amendments to the Constitution. But only 10 of those amendments made it through ratification. (The raise proposal and another that set rules for apportionment of political districts were never approved.) Madison's amendment is still technically pending, since it was ratified by 25 states since 1789, 13 short of the vote needed. Nobody knows if the courts would uphold the ratification over such an extended period. In any case, Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the House Republican leader, has suggested the same goal could be accomplished by legislation.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, the public interest lobbying group that supported the raise as long as it was coupled with the elimination of payments from private interests, said the real answer was an automatic formula of regular, modest pay increases.

''We must have a system that is not going to involve members having to vote to increase their own pay and feather their own nest,'' Mr. Wertheimer said. #200 Years of Setting Salaries For 200 years members of Congress did set their own salaries, with varied results. Twice, both in the 19th century, efforts to increase their pay produced political disasters. In 1816 Congress tried to change the $6 a day rate to a $1,500 annual salary, an increase of about 60 percent. Supporters argued that this would stop members from dragging out sessions to earn their daily pay. But the puplic uproar forced Congress to roll back the raise to $8 a day.

In 1873 members of Congress voted to raise their salaries from $5,000 to $7,500, and made the increase retroactive. That was too much for the public, and the Republicans, who had controlled Congress since the Civil War, lost more than 90 seats and the majority in the next election in 1874.

On the other hand, in 1955, amid the post World War II boom, Congress voted to raise its salary by 80 percent, from $12,500 to $22,500. Not a single incumbent was turned out of office, Representative Morris K. Udall of Arizonia reminded his colleagues in 1964, when another pay increase was pending.

After considerable pain, Congress did approve the raise in 1964, increasing salaries to $30,000. The difficulty also prompted lawmakers to adopt the quadrennial commission system in 1967.

The system worked at first, but in the 1974 election year, Congress rejected a recommendation to increase its pay to $52,800, saying it was making its sacrfice to inflationary times. That was the begining of what the latest quadrennial commission described as a steady erosion of Congressional, executive and judicial salaries. The commission proposed to correct this with the 51 percent raise this year.

A version of this article appears in print on February 9, 1989, on Page B00012 of the National edition with the headline: Defeat of Congressional Pay Increase Demolishes No-Vote System. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe